Friday, November 22, 2013

Our Rainy Place

We have been even busier than usual this week preparing for our Thanksgiving guests. We are so excited that they are coming! Just look around your house and then try to imagine starting all over again, moving into an empty house and having to buy every single little thing you use daily plus furniture. It has been so much fun doing that and luckily we love doing the shopping and selecting together! We are also interviewing and now waiting for quotes on some of the large projects we would like to do to this house...whew!

Still, I spend more time than I should sitting here at my desk in the kitchen reading stuff on my computer and watching life outside my window. We have a new resident in our pool. Isn't it adorable? This is the top of the chlorine dispenser...makes me smile!

We also have a number of birds frequenting our backyard. There are Gambol Quail, Hummingbirds, Thrushes, and others. Also we get see Ladder-backed Woodpeckers and Gila Woodpeckers but this Gila is the only one that I've gotten a photo of since we've been back.

Every day, without fail, we have a number of Cactus Wrens hanging on the bamboo pool fence, the ocotillo, and checking out Kunu's hat! This is the Arizona state bird.

Cactus Wren in flight.

Their favorite place to "hang" around!

Our power went out at 3:45 this morning and I awoke minutes later. Rich called the power company around 7:00 and to my great surprise, a person actually answered the phone and was able to tell him that 1,000 customers were without power due to a major circuit breaker failure and they expected to have service restored at 8:30...Wow! I was so impressed! When it hadn't been restored by 9:00 he called them again, immediately got another live person who said that there still 285 customers without power due to a downed line and they would have service restored by 2:30. What great service from the folks at the power company.

Yesterday Rich had moved the motorhome to a more level part of our driveway and I cleaned it because it will serve as a guest house next weekend. We were worried about the frig/freezer because we have already done our Thanksgiving weekend shopping. Rich got the big extension cord and ran it from the motorhome to the frig, started the motorhome generator, and voila...the frig was back on!

During all this, I took this shot of my favorite saguaro and the clouds drifting over the mountains.

We went to breakfast...yummy...did some more shopping and when we returned there was a large crew and several power company workers at the intersection near our house. The downed line had been hit by lightning. Shortly after we returned home the power came back on. It continued to rain nearly all day so this afternoon I ventured out in it to take a few photos of our "stream." Yes, of course, it's just a shallow wash that cuts across our property, but today it was a stream!

This is the Arizona state tree, a Palo Verde, and verde it is today! I was so thrilled when I saw this brilliant green.

You've probably seen this dead branch before because it is also a favorite sight and when wet today it was black...a lovely contrast to its surroundings.

Oops, I should have taken photos of the tremendous amount of branches Rich trimmed from our Ironwood tree yesterday. It looks great and thankfully we had most of our scheduled tasks completed before the rains came since it's supposed to continue through the weekend.